Ashley Nicole Mason did not die from strangulation, and the stab wounds in her stomach were inflicted post-mortem, a New York City medical examiner testified yesterday, contradict- ing earlier statements by the Maryland medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the 14-year-old Columbia girl.

Dr. James Gill's testimony was offered yesterday as an argument that Scott Jory Brill, one of two men convicted of killing Ashley, whose body was found in woods behind a Columbia Pizza Hut on Nov. 3, 2000, was denied his right to a fair trial. Yesterday's hearing was on Bill's motion for a new trial.

Brill's lawyer, Joseph Murtha, is questioning both the testimony of Maryland Deputy Medical Examiner Jack M. Titus and the disclosure - after Brill's trial in October last year - of an investigative report that says the stab wounds to Ashley's abdomen appeared to have been inflicted after her death.

The timing of the stab wounds and the role strangulation played in the girl's death played a crucial role during Brill's trial - and both were cited by Howard Circuit Judge Dennis M. Sweeney, who heard the case without a jury, in his decision to convict the 20-year- old Columbia man of first-degree murder.

Brill, of the 5700 block of Sweetwind Place, told police investigators after his arrest that he stabbed the girl once in the stomach after she was dead and that he choked her but "not all the way," court papers said.

And while Titus, who Murtha calls the state's "most-vital witness," testified during Brill's trial that Ashley was stabbed in the stomach while she was still alive and listed strangulation as one of two causes of her death, Gill said neither statement makes sense.

There was too little blood pooled in the abdomen for the wounds to be anything but post- mortem, he said. And tiny hemorrhages on Ashley's face show that blood continued to flow through her main neck arteries during the choking. Both carotid arteries were cut, and Ashley, who was stabbed 34 times, bled to death, he said.

"If she had died from strangu- lation her heart would have stopped and she would not have lost all that blood from subsequent stab wounds," Gill said.

Senior Assistant State's Attorney Michael Rexroad questioned the source of Gill's information - many of the investigative reports and photographs were sent to him by Brill's mother - and noted that the New York doctor never spoke with Titus or asked for his lab notes.

Rexroad also asked whether Ashley could still have been alive, and hovering between life and death, when she was stabbed in the stomach. In a report about the case, Gill noted that Ashley would have had no or very little blood pressure when the wounds were inflicted, Rexroad said.

If Ashley had a heartbeat, "there would be a lot more than a cupful of blood in the abdomen," Gill said.

Gill was the only witness to testify yesterday. Prosecutors said they might offer their own witnesses when the hearing continues Dec. 13. Brill will also be sentenced that day if Sweeney denies Murtha's motion for a new trial.

Frederick James Moore, 23, who was also convicted of first- degree murder in the case, was sentenced in August to life in prison.